First Time Brewer, Long Time Beer Lover.

[Northkit]

Hey All,

First time home brewer here from NZ living in Melbourne, first brew has been down for a week and a half and boy has it been a learning curve (In a good way)

So my wife got me my first kit for my birthday after years and years of me saying I wanted to brew home brew..... A Wife buying a home brew kit, this is why I married her.

With the kit I got a basic "BeerMakers" draught kit and everything I needed to start, before diving in I did some research online and also got a book. Didn't seem too complicated, or so I thought. The preparation, cleaning and measuring all went OK. It wasn't until the next night that I realized I had missed a few things or had not really prepared the environment well enough.

I did everything to the letter but one thing the kit cans didn't tell me and also the videos I saw on the Liquor craft site was to take an OG reading! I didn't want to take one after as I was afraid it would wreck the beer because as a n00b I was afraid of touching the fermenter once it was going.
The next drama was the temperature, it was holding at a cozy 18-19c for the first 5 days then it got cold in Melbourne and dropped to 13-14c. A few days after that I could not for the life of me warm this thing up, I had it wrapped in a robe like Hugh Hefner and everything. Still no joy, so I purchased a heat pad and got it back up to 22c.

After a few days of of no air lock action I took a gravity reading and it was at 1020, because I didn't know the OG I looked around and 1020 seems far too high for a draught plus it tasted sweet. Again the internet told me to give the fermenter a rockin and keep the heat up, I did this last night and today the gravity is down to 1016. Yay!

I guess what bothers me is that the beer is still super cloudy, sweet and the kit says it should be ready in 4-7 days max.... this seems kind of fast. Again from what I read online these kit instructions are not the best so I will leave it going for another week or until it reaches around 1010 FG.

My questions are:
Should I leave it longer in the fermenter to clear it up or is it ok to bottle if the FG is at a good level?
Will the increase/decrease in temps have any nasty effects on the brew?

Sorry about the rambling, but man I've been having dreams about bubbling fermenters and beer since this brew went down. This is more stressful than watching a Carlton game!

Thanks in advance.

R
P.S Apologies if there are some obvious mistakes or silly questions in this, it can only get better from here right? :blink:

 

[carniebrew]

Welcome aboard mate! Sounds like a pretty normal first brew experience to me (and that comes from a fellow Carlton madman).

You're right on the kit instructions, hardly worth the paper they're written on, but you've gotta start somewhere. If you can post your exact ingredients, along with the volume you got into the fermenter, we should be able to give you a very good estimate of what the OG would have been, and what your FG should be.

Don't expect it to 'clear up' in the fermenter, it'll take a few weeks, probably longer, before it clears in the bottle. You can add finings to speed that process up, but don't worry about that for a while yet, the cloudiness won't affect the flavour, it's how real beer looks. As for when to bottle, after about a week, take a gravity reading each day for a few days, and when it's stable over 2 or 3 readings, and at your expected FG, it's ready to go. I bottle most of my beers after 10-14 days in the fermenter.

As for 'obvious mistakes', other than not taking an OG reading I reckon it's the thread title that's the only issue here!

 

[Northkit]

Hey mate, thanks for the reply. Ingredients are below.

Beer Makers Draught kit (1.7kg) (Is this enough info on this?)
Brew Blend malt booster number 15 (1kg)
Standard premium yeast pack (5g)
Topped up to 19 liters

Hope this is enough info.


Thanks Again.

 

[Northkit]

And thanks for pointing out the thread title typo, I knew that 4th beer would catch up......

 

[carniebrew]

Yep, that's enough info. Assuming that 'malt booster' kit is 500gm DME, 250gm dex and 250gm maltodextrin, I have that as an OG of around 1047, with an expected FG of 1014, so you're not far off.

I'm surprised the 'premium yeast pack' is a measly 5 grams. Not a huge deal, but grab yourself some US-05 yeast next time, or the BRY-97, they come in 11.5gm packs which is much better for ~20l brews.

Should be a pretty good first brew, around 4.7% in the bottle, and if the Beer Makers Draught is similar to the Coopers or Morgans Draught tins, around 30 IBU, which is a good start.

 

[Northkit]

Awesome, thanks for this I really appreciate it.

So once it gets to 1014 it should be good to bottle? Few more questions that might be obvious, how long and at what temperature should I store the bottles?

Thanks again.

 

[carniebrew]

Not as soon as it gets to 1014, as I said above, test it over a few days, make sure it stays stable. I don't know the exact makeup of fermentables in your brew booster, so it's just an estimate. You're only using around 100ml for every hydrometer sample, and it's well worth it, especially when you make it a taste test too....

Once bottled, keep the bottles inside, above 18C or so, as the yeast will need a week or two to convert the priming sugar to co2 and carb your beer. Given it's your first home brew, crack one after a week to see how it's carbing up, and it'll give you a feel for what young beer tastes like. The beer should be ready to drink after about 2 weeks in the bottle. But try and hide a few bottles away (in a cupboard is fine) and drink one each month over a few months, and you'll see how home brew develops over time. I recently cracked a 6 month old bottle of pale ale that I'd forgotten about, it was a ripper, although it was pretty highly hopped, so that helps.

 

[Droopy]

Welcome to one of the best hobbies anyone will ever throw their hand at!

One of the worst things about beginning to brew your own beer, I found was not realising the waiting part of it. Not the waiting 10-14 days while its in the fermenter... The "recommended" 12 weeks minumum when it's bottled and conditioning/maturing. None of mine have ever got to 12 weeks, I think about 8 is the most so far... I'll get there one day,

I also started with the good wife buying me my first homebrew equipment. God bless her.

 

[Northkit]

Good advice, I will give it another test tomorrow and the weekend to see how it gets on.

With the bottling, keeping it at 18+ might be hard without a heat pad and the fact that Melbourne is pretty cold at the moment. How do you keep the temps up for so long when bottle conditioning?

And my last question for the evening, once this is done I am keen to get straight into another brew. What would you suggest with the current weather in Melbourne?
My heat pad is a constant 22-24c or if I was to leave it in the house with no heating I get around 12-14c, anything in these ranges that might work out?

Cheers

 

[carniebrew]

I store my new brews in my under-stairs cupboard, but then at my place there's someone home all day every day so the heater's always on, and it doesn't drop much below 16 degrees in that cupboard. Your beer will still carb up at lower temperatures, but it'll likely take a bit longer. It might be worth getting a little portable weather station type jobbie that does max/min temps, and putting it in a few places around your house, find somewhere that stays warm even during our beloved Melbourne winter nights....

I have a fridge in my garage to ferment in, with an STC-1000 temperature controller that has a 100w floodlight plugged into the heating side.

You could try brewing a lager this time of the year, lager yeasts prefer the 12C type temperatures...but they're a bit more fiddly and time-consuming to brew so do your research first!

 

[carniebrew]

<snip>... The "recommended" 12 weeks minumum when it's bottled and conditioning/maturing <snip>.

Crikey, who's recommending 12 weeks min of bottle conditioning now? I was struggling with waiting 2-3 weeks!

 

[Droopy]

Crikey, who's recommending 12 weeks min of bottle conditioning now? I was struggling with waiting 2-3 weeks!

I think the instructions with the first kit can I did said 12 weeks, although yeah everything else I had ever read said min 3 weeks. It was probably to make their product taste a bit better on first gulp.

 

[Northkit]

Hey all, so it's coming up 2 weeks tomorrow since the brew went down and the gravity is still reading 1016. I ended up opening the fermenter over the weekend and giving it a good stir in hope of getting the yeast back in action, by the looks of things it didn't do much. The beer itself has cleared up loads and doesn't taste too bad, not great but OK.

Do I bother bottling this batch, adding more yeast or chalking it up to a loss?

Cheers

 

[carniebrew]

Bottle it mate, no way you should write it off. 1016 is fine given the 'brew booster' probably had a healthy dose of maltodextrin in it. Get it in the bottle, leave it somewhere warm for a couple of weeks then crack one and report back how it went...

 

[Northkit]

Hey,

Thanks for all the advice on the first brew, I bottled it all tonight and have the next brew on the go. One question though, to keep the temps up while it's in the bottle I have wrapped a heat belt around the bottles and this is holding a constant temp of 23c. Is this OK to do? Also wasn't sure safety wise if you can use the beer heat belts like this. Same as having it around a fermenter I guess.

Cheers

 

[carniebrew]

I don't think you're doing any harm....but what temp do they sit at without the heat belt? 23 is ok, but they don't need to be that high, they'll carbonate at anything around 16C or higher, just a bit more slowly at the lower end of that scale.

 

[Northkit]

That's the hard part, outside is too cold without heating and inside goes up and down with ducted heating and normal room temp. Is it better to just have them at one constant temp? Will 23c effect the outcome of the beer?

Thanks again.

 

[carniebrew]

Nah, inside is better, don't worry about the fluctuations, they're not all that huge. Put 'em in a linen cupboard or some such, you'd be surprised how little variation places like that can get.

23 shouldn't affect the beer's flavour...but I reckon you should save the planet...turn off the heat belt and put 'em in a cupboard. Otherwise KRudd will send you a bill for all the carbon you're producing...

 

[Northkit]

Hey Carnie,

So I just cracked open my first brew after a week in the bottles and low and behold... It tastes like beer! I was shocked that it's actually good, it's basic and a little cloudy but it was fine. Reminded me of some of the polish beers I've had.

Will leave them stored away for a few more weeks and hopefully they will get better. Not too sure why it turned out so cloudy for a draught beer but it's not sweet or fruity which was my mean concern.

Thanks again for your replies, this has given me a boost to keep going.

:beerbang:

 

[carniebrew]

Great work mate. It's cloudy 'coz it still has yeast and various other things still in suspension. Commercial beer has all that removed, but it doesn't affect the taste, just the look. Down the track you can look into using finings and/or cold crashing to clear a beer more quickly, don't worry about it yet. They'll eventually clear anyway, give 'em a couple of weeks. When you pour them, leave the last 5 or 10ml in the bottle so the yeast doesn't mix back in...if you care about such things, I don't!